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This year has delivered a nonstop string of humiliations for MAGA isolationists as Trump has increasingly turned towards military measures. A few days ago Tucker Carlson claimed Trump captured Maduro for the explicit purpose of legalizing gay marriage in Venezuela (???). Tulsi Gabbard has arguably had it even worse, as her 2019 opening speech for her presidential campaign criticized Trump's flirting with regime change in Venzeula and Iran, yet she happily serves in the Trump administration and even supports Trump's policies. A report by Bloomberg today states that she was actually excluded from meetings discussing the Venezuela op, with her Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position jokingly being recast as "do not invite". Presumably the rest of Trump's team thought she might leak the details, or even commit outright treason by informing the Venezuelans beforehand.
It's hard to have principles when the MAGA movement is a cult of personality with an extremely narrow window of what's deemed acceptable to criticize Trump for. Over the coming few years I expect more MAGA isolationists to debase themselves with positions that are basically "actually interventionism is fine as long as it's Trump doing it, after all it hasn't turned into an Iraq-tier disaster yet."
You're going to keep posting stuff like this at the top level, and when you finally get another mod warning, you're going to act like you're being targeted for your political views, aren't you?
I mean, it's not great, but have you seen any top-level "DAE the outgroup are evil hypocrites?" posts from the right getting modded? If "OP has to know this offends the local circlejerk, so he must be consciously baiting" is necessary and sufficient grounds for moderator action, we might as well pack up and just call this a forum for right-wingers rather than the bag of niceties that is in the sidebar.
(...and either way, the Gabbard thing seems rather interesting and was new to me, so I don't think you can argue this is just bait.)
Eh, I think the substance of what he's saying is basically correct - the MAGA base is inconsistent and hypocritical, has few real principles other than loyalty to Trump, and will revise commitments in order to maintain that loyalty to Trump - but it is not framed in a very constructive way. I'm not sure I'd mod it, but I would want to mildly discourage this kind of posting.
The conclusion that Antipopulist is asserting seems true, to me, at least in broad strokes. But I'd hope for higher standards for opening posts than just "is true".
It should go without saying that this also applies to partisan posts in other directions.
Maybe. The question is whether the MAGA base is pacifists or anti-GWOT democracy building.
If the latter, then no hypocrisy. Venezuela seems very different than Iraq. But time will tell.
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